


Late Night, Early Morning

by ASimpleArchivist



Series: Overwatch Love [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Children, Children of Characters, DFAB reader, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Early Mornings, Established Relationship, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fatherhood, Female Reader, Forehead Kisses, Gift Giving, I'd have his babies hands down, Lazy Mornings, Love, Marriage, Morning Cuddles, Morning Kisses, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherhood, Parent-Child Relationship, Reader was DFAB, Reader-Insert, Sleepy Kisses, Wedding Rings, established marriage, fem!reader - Freeform, lots of kisses, surprise it's nothing but sap, that cowman makes me weak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 02:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16965993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASimpleArchivist/pseuds/ASimpleArchivist
Summary: Your husband is gone on a mission. Your daughter misses him. So do you. Fortunately, he seems to have a sixth sense for it.





	Late Night, Early Morning

**Author's Note:**

> My first McCree fic and it’s domestic trash. How predictable of me. (Ssshhh this isn’t a self-insert disguised as a reader-insert what are you talking about.) It’s supposed to take place a few months after the recall, but as we all know the Overwatch timeline is wishy-washy at best. McCree found you during his years away from Blackwatch and brought you with him because he know a base full of Overwatch operatives was most definitely the safest place for you and your daughter. There’s a couple of vague mentions of who I think was recalled and came back, as well as who joined, but not much.  
> Originally I had wanted something along this line, except it would’ve been without a child and after the “Reunion” short, but I figured this might be a little easier to elaborate on. This was also primarily inspired by babysitting my young nephew a couple of weeks ago - please enjoy.

“...Mama?”

You stirred, rolling over and blinking against the dark towards your cracked doorway. You kept the lamp in the cramped living room on as a sort of night light, and the pale yellow light framed a dark silhouette peering tentatively inside the room, standing about three feet and five inches.

Your expression softened and you sighed softly, sitting up and beckoning. “What’s wrong, baby?”

The girl hesitated, and as your eyes adjusted you saw that she was gripping the doorjamb nervously.

You gestured again, holding your arms open. “Come here, it’s okay.”

Slowly, she stepped into the room and shut the door behind her quietly. You recognized the stuffed bunny tucked under her arm (a gift from Reinhardt when she was born - she’d been attached to it ever since) in addition to the quilt you and your husband had stitched while you were still pregnant clutched around her shoulders. It served as a crude pixelation of a horse mid-gallop across a grassy plain, though over time stains and tears had broken it in. She shuffled to your side of the bed, face pale and eyes red and glistening.

Your brows furrowed as you helped her up onto the mattress and smoothed her short, silky hair out of her face. “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”

She shook her head, not quite meeting your gaze as she curled up into your side and rested her temple on your chest. You reclined again, tucking the sheets over her and stroking your fingertips through her hair in the way you knew soothed her. If she wasn’t keen on talking about what had made her upset, then you weren’t going to force her - you respected her privacy, even if she was only five. You didn’t want to make her feel like she was obligated to tell you everything. She didn’t come to your room very often anymore, having grown accustomed to sleeping in her own room, but when she did it was usually in the middle of the night and for good reason; you’d never turn her away, even if you didn’t know what was going on.

It didn’t bother you all that much because you’d been awake anyway, restless and unable to calm your worries.

So there you laid, eyes closed as you petted her soft hair and listened to her breathe. After a while she shifted slightly and clutched at your loose sleep shirt.

“...I miss daddy, mama.”

Ah. You should’ve known.

Your husband had been gone for more than a week now, off on a reconnaissance mission somewhere deep on the border of Russia with a couple of other members from Overwatch. They were gathering information on the Omnic revolts within the country, seeing if it was going to get to the point where they’d have to intervene, but as far as you knew they were just observing at this point.

It scared you too much to think for too long that they might have to step into a warzone.

“I know,” you whispered, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head and lingering there to smell her shampoo. “I do, too.”

She reached up and touched the thick, vaguely scratchy material bundled around your pillow, her eyes glittering in the pale light that shown from the Athena panel mounted next to the door. “Is that why you have daddy’s cape?”

You hummed softly. Lucio and Hana had introduced her to the wonderful concept of superheroes not long ago, and she’d fixated upon the idea that the serape your husband wore on a regular basis was _not_ a serape but was, in fact, a cape - he was her hero in many ways, and she’d told him so on more than one occasion. He’d even adjusted how it laid to give off the appearance before offering her a high-speed piggyback ride down the hall of the base hollering like a banshee.

The memory made you smile, but the absence of your third part made itself known as a hollow pit low in your stomach. You sighed and reached for it, unraveling it and folding it over both your frames. The heavy material settled as a pleasant weight, smelling vaguely of detergent and cologne and the smoke that had long since faded from your husband’s daily routine. He’d made the effort to quit when he’d found out you were pregnant, and you had only seen him break his streak of abstinence the night you’d gone into labor - and only after you’d almost ordered him to so it would help calm his nerves (fortunately, he hadn’t had a relapse, and you’d both pulled out of the experience intact; intact and mighty pleased with what you’d managed to create together). He’d left it with you so you’d have something to remember him by, something that reminded you of him and would help you not miss him as much (...and partly because Jack had insisted it was too garish to wear on a stealth mission), but in some ways it made it worse. It made you wish that you had him to hold instead; the lack of a dip in the mattress, thick arms wrapped loosely around your form, firm chest and soft abdomen pressed into the curve of your spine was only that much more obvious when you’d bury your nose in the worn material and smell nothing but the love of your life.

“When is he coming back?”

You sighed silently, letting your head fall back into the pliant filling of your pillow. “Any day now. We have very limited communications with the _Orca_ because we don’t want other people knowing they’re there, so we don’t know exactly.”

“I hope it’s soon.”

“Yeah.” You inhaled, exhaled, feeling a little ridiculous at the empty feeling within you. You were a grown-ass woman and you were acting like a lovesick teenager pining after her lover. But at the same time, you didn’t mind it all that much - you were still as much in love with him as you’d been the day you’d first kissed and he’d promised you everything he had, and you know that was the best way to be in love. “Me, too.” You paused, then kissed her head again. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, mama,” she murmured.

Silence reigned the room for a long time, and you could feel the beginnings of drowsiness tugging at the edges of your consciousness the longer you laid and focused on soothing your daughter. She’d lazily started tracing the letters she’d been learning into the soft expanse of your clothed belly, but her movements grew increasingly sluggish. Eventually, her arm sank until it laid lifeless over your navel. A quick glance downward confirmed that she’d drifted off and was breathing steadily.

You exhaled quietly, relieved, and relaxed into the mattress. The hum of the vents was a white noise you’d long grown used to, and after a few minutes you heard the distant, muffled patter of rain on the roof. You hoped that it wasn’t storming wherever Jesse was, or, worse, snowing - he right despised the cold, warm by nature and used to the arid heat of his home country. It was a gentle contrast to the cool, rainy days you preferred, as you enjoyed sitting in the glass-domed rooms closer to the cliffside end of the base and watching the water trickle down the panes and the lightning flash like discharges of fire from heaven. It explained a lot about your relationship, in some ways, but you were too tired to delve into that thought.

Listening to the thunder rumbling miles and miles away, you closed your eyes and slipped off into sleep.

* * *

Leave it to his luck for the heavens to crack open mere moments before the _Orca_ landed and reconnected into the high-end dock on the north side of the base. Jesse sighed irritably as he ducked his head and hunched his shoulder against the incessant bullets of cold rain chasing his heels as he jogged towards the opened bay doors along with the others. They’d worry about the spent supplies until the weather got better.

Jack and Ana were waiting for them, both looking like they’d been lacking sleep for the whole time the team had been away, and as Jesse took off his hat and shook it to dislodge the stubborn droplets of water he resigned himself to having to debrief with both commanders. He glanced longingly towards the long winding corridor leading off to the left, but as Jack and Lena began to talk quietly about what they’d seen, Genji caught his eye. The past heir slipped in close to the cowboy, casting a glance towards both older officers, before nudging him insistently in the armored ribs.

“Go,” he murmured, his voice staticky from his visor’s speaker. “I will back you up.”

Jesse opened his mouth to thank him, feeling his insides warm at his old friend’s consideration, but Genji only shook his head slightly and pushed him towards the direction of the corridor. Jesse looked to Jack to make sure he was distracted before booking it towards the shadowed hall. He thought he saw Ana giving him a soft look of understanding, but the brim of his hat hid most of his peripheral - not to mention the fact that he wasn’t particularly concentrating on anything other than his quarters at the moment.

His spurs jingled as he walked briskly, the sound echoing off the walls obnoxiously loud. He grimaced and had half the mind to take them off so he wouldn’t wake the others, but he’d been away for far too long and he wasn’t keen on wasting any more time that he could be spending with his girls.

Soon enough (and at the same time not), he arrived at his door. He was quick to press his flesh hand against the lock, breathing a sigh of relief when Athena didn’t greet him like she normally did. He cast the panel a grateful look as he slipped inside the dimly lit room and waited until the door shut behind him before beginning to shuck his wet outerwear.

First came his hat, which he hung on the peg next to the door. Next was his chestplate and belt, quickly followed by his chaps and boots. He winced when his spurs jangled in protest, gripping the metal as he set his boots down and praying you both were still asleep. He hated being gone from you both for so long, but he did enjoy surprising you whenever he did return.

He began to unbutton his shirt as he padded on damp socks towards your shared bedroom, flipping his dripping hair out of his eyes and noticing that the door adjacent to yours was open. Slowly, he stopped before your door and opened it just far enough to peek inside. He felt his heart melt as soon as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

 _Aw, shucks, darlin’_ , he wanted to say, but he settled for a smile that was too bright for his weary face. He carefully stepped inside and closed the door behind him, toeing his socks off and making quick work of changing into his soft flannel pajama pants and a plain t-shirt that was laying uncharacteristically on the dresser. After a couple of seconds of inward debating, he slipped into the bathroom and toweled off his hair for good measure. Then he crept to his side of the bed and carefully crawled under the sheets until he was next to you.

He could feel the stress rolling off of his aching, tired body in waves as he sank into the mattress, slowly finding a space to settle against you. He pressed a quick, chaste kiss to your temple and, thankfully, you didn’t stir. He draped an arm over you and your daughter, waiting for the flutters in his belly to fade long enough that a deep, fitful, satisfying sleep would overcome him.

How blessed was he, he felt, to have such perfect, priceless treasures to come home to.

* * *

When you woke, you were hot and the length of your side was sticky with sweat clinging to your skin. You grimaced, shifting slightly in an attempt to relieve the heat trapped under your shirt, but a solid mass behind and wrapped over you kept you from moving. You cracked your eyes open, the cogs in your mind struggling to boot back up, and it took you a few seconds of staring in the dim, early morning sunlight at the hairy arm tucked over your stomach to come to a realization.

A soft snore near your ear only reaffirmed it.

You relaxed immediately, feeling your face warm as you smiled and reached down to twine your fingers with your husband’s prosthetic ones. The metal was cool against your skin, but the rest of his body was as warm as it ever was. You’d joked about him being your own personal heater countless times before, and he always took it in stride with a pleased grin and a wink. Both he and your daughter were still out cold, faces serene and bodies lax. You wondered at what point he’d returned, and how he’d managed to sneak into bed without waking you (you were an incredibly light sleeper, as opposed to his death-like slumbers), but it didn’t really matter all that much. You were just glad he was home.

And as the dawn began to creep through the window above your bed, slowly changing from pink to orange to white, you enjoyed being nearly smothered by the two lights of your life - your sun and your moon. You were surprised that Jesse hadn’t stirred yet, but given how hard the mission must’ve been on him and how late he’d returned, you couldn’t blame him. You were just glad that he was getting the rest he deserved.

But once you heard the birds start chittering outside, the man’s slow breaths caught in his throat. He shifted slightly, sighing as he stretched his legs. His eyes fluttered open slowly, unfocused, but when he saw you gazing at him, he smiled a lazy grin that made his puppy-dog brown eyes shine. “Mornin’, darlin’.”

“Morning, cowboy,” you murmured, returning the smile and leaning over to kiss him. He hummed into your mouth appreciatively, tilting his head to nip at your lip playfully. “What time did you get back?”

He shifted to flush his chest against your side again, pressing his face into the crook of your neck. His beard tickled. “‘Bout four.”

You grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

“‘S fine,” he mumbled, his lips grazing your hairline. “All in a day’s work.”

“Try nine,” you retorted. You reached up and stroked your fingers through his hair. “I missed you. She missed you.”

“‘M sorry, darlin’,” he murmured, sounding genuinely guilty. “We ended up stayin’ longer than we thought we would. It was tough, tryin’ t’navigate without gettin’ caught.”

“Don’t worry about it,” you responded gently, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. “You’re home now, and you’re still alive. That’s all that matters.”

“The hardest men to kill are the ones that’ve got family to go back to,” he said softly.

You hummed in agreement, thinking of Torbjörn and Ana. Then you felt the deadweight against your leg shift, stretch, and sigh softly. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, blinking blearily up at you, then stared at the man next to you. A delighted but shy smile lit up her face and made her puppy-dog brown eyes sparkle.

“Mornin’, pumpkin,” Jesse said, returning the smile. Your daughter took no further prompt and clambered over you, squeezing herself into the nonexistent gap between the both of you. You scooted over a little to allow her room - you’d had your share of him, and you didn’t mind letting her have a turn.

“I missed you,” she mumbled into his chest, snuggling into him. He wrapped her up in his arms and squeezed her tight, smothering his face into the thick, silky locks she inherited from him.

“Missed you, too, pumpkin,” he mumbled. “You been good for mama?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He stroked the length of her back and looked at her with soft eyes - the picture of a man at his most content. “I knew you would...oh!” He brightened a little and pulled back enough to peer into her eyes. “And guess what?”

“What?” she asked, eyes round with curiosity.

“I got you somethin’,” he grinned. “Let me go grab it real quick - you just stay here and keep your mama warm.”

You figured that this was going to shift into the rest of the morning, so you sat up against the headboard and settled the covers over your lap. Your daughter followed suit and tucked herself into your side, practically bouncing with excitement as she waited. You listened to your husband’s heavy, even footsteps, and when he stepped back into the room bearing not one, but two small boxes, you raised a brow at him. He only grinned and handed your daughter the larger one first. She opened it delicately despite her enthusiasm, and she beamed when she spotted the small chain of gold on the inside, dotted with small stars.

“Never forget you’re the light of my life, pumpkin,” he murmured, climbing back onto the bed. He pressed a smooch to the crown of her head and helped clasp the necklace around the girl’s neck. She grinned and bounced off the bed, admiring the shiny metal in the floor-length mirror that shielded your closet.

“Can I go show Hana and Lulu?” she asked, glancing between the two of you with pleading eyes.

“Go ahead,” you said, smiling softly. “I’m sure somebody’s got breakfast cooking.”

She merely grinned and darted out of the room. You heard the door to your shared quarters shut shortly thereafter.

When you turned your attention back to your husband, he was staring at the small polished wooden box in his hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb over it somewhat anxiously.

“What’ve you got there, cowboy?” you asked teasingly, tilting your head. He worried his lip a moment, not even glancing at you, before offering it tentatively. Raising a questioning brow, you took it and slowly opened it. You froze when you saw what was inside.

“I know it’s a little late,” he began, “and that we done got the piece of paper, but...I’ve been saving up, and I saw that, and…” He trailed off for a moment, gazing down at the ring mounted within the plush red velvet within the box with a thousand-yard stare. He was probably remembering all the times you’d both struggled to get by with enough money scraped together for groceries and utilities before Winston had recalled. It was extremely difficult for him to get jobs because he was recognized more often than not, and then when he’d get an offer for a mercenary's job he’d be gone for up to weeks on end. You’d been able to work, but when you’d gotten pregnant after a year and a half of marriage, that hadn’t lasted much longer.

Still, you’d made it work. He’d made sure you and your daughter never went hungry, had always ensured a roof over your heads, and had always tried to have you both well-dressed and warm. You’d just had to make a few sacrifices along the way - including buying a wedding ring.

“Oh, Jesse,” you breathed, blinking to ward away the thin film of hot tears welling in your eyes. You reached over and kissed him soundly, scratching the thick scruff under his chin. He rumbled at that, like a big kitten. Luckily, it seemed to make him relax. You drew back, catching his eyes, and gave him the most earnestly grateful look you could muster. “It’s _perfect_.”

He gave you that familiar weak smile, the one he always had whenever he could scarcely contain his love for you. He wasn’t an emotionally vulnerable man by nature to others, but to you he always tried to be as open as he could manage - though with time it had gotten easier and easier until the point he could hardly keep up any barriers around you.

“‘M mighty glad, darlin’,” he murmured, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. He took the ring gingerly from its perch, brandishing it with trembling fingers. “May I?”

“You may,” you whispered.

Jesse grasped your nondominant hand carefully, the smooth metal of his prosthetic fingers chilly against your flesh. He slowly guided the small band of gold onto your ring finger, smoothing his thumb over the small line of rubies along its curve. They sparkled in the warm morning sunlight, and all at once it felt as though everything in your life finally clicked into place.

You admired the ring a long moment, allowing him to hold your hand with both of his. Then you grinned. “Now I’ve just got to get you one.”

“Aw, shucks, darlin,” he laughed, bumping his forehead against your temple playfully. “You don’t have to. I could just get Torb to weld a band’o’brass onto this ol’ gauntlett of mine.”

You pouted up at him, but it didn’t last long because he was soon kissing it away. “That’s not the point, Jesse,” you said firmly. “I want to spoil you, too.”

“I’d be liable to lose it out there,” he reminded you, somewhat grimly. “I wouldn’t want to waste it.”

“Still,” you mumbled, knowing he was right. You’d figure out an alternative - dancing your way around Jesse McCree’s stubbornness was your God-given talent.

“I appreciate the sentiment, darlin’,” he chuckled near your ear, lipping your lobe playfully. He laughed again when you shoved at him with a soft giggle. “I’m a mighty blessed man to have such considerate wife.”

You rolled your eyes. “You won’t be saying that when I tell you all the things I’m going to have to do in town that you’ll have to watch our girl for me.”

He puffed out his chest in mock offense. “I’m sure I can handle it,” he said. “I just crawled my way out of a Russian snowstorm to get back to you.”

“Russian snowstorms have nothing on five year-old girls,” you retorted. He shrugged lightly, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you against him to breathe in your scent. You sighed softly in contentment, relaxing into his warmth gratefully. After a long moment, he kissed your temple.

“I love you somethin’ fierce, darlin’,” he murmured tenderly into your hair.

“I love you, too, cowboy,” you returned, kissing his sternum. “More than you’ll ever know.”


End file.
